Dons will come out swinging – McInnes

AFC: Manager backs his Reds to silence their critics in style

Aberdeen manager Derek McInnes has urged his battered and bruised side to come out fighting after a week of criticism.

The Dons boss has spent the week trying to rebuild confidence in the camp following a penalty shoot-out exit at Hearts and the heaviest defeat of his Aberdeen reign – a 5-0 defeat by Rangers at Ibrox.

The criticism has come thick and fast in the direction of the manager and his players and McInnes believes the retort must come on the pitch, starting with tomorrow’s match against Hibernian.

He said: “Everybody is giving us a kicking at the minute. It’s important that we throw a few punches back.

“We’ve got to demonstrate that we care and not take things lying down. We’ve got to fight back.”

McInnes is full of fighting talk but he is also not ignorant of the need to ensure there is no repeat of the poor display in Glasgow last weekend.

He said: “Any time we’ve managed to beat Rangers or Celtic, I can see it in my team in the tunnel, even in the dressing room beforehand.

“They transmit that confidence and it comes out in the performance. So we were lacking in experience, lacking in personality.

“But we can still be critical of other things going on in the game. I’m sure the players don’t feel great about themselves – none of us do.

“But we’ve been in the game long enough to know that it’s all about the response when you have a couple of bad results.”

McInnes is usually stoic in his approach to his role at the Dons but he admits the pain of defeat has cut deep this week.

He said: “Saturday was so difficult. I felt as if I couldn’t stop the bleeding, watching what was happening.

“I had eight players unavailable. All eight would have been stripped. That’s half your outfield players in the squad. We had five who probably would have started, so that’s half your starting team unavailable.

“We looked young and we looked spooked at times. And we certainly looked as if we were in need of some help out there. That’s tough, to see your team suffer like that.

“I now want to make sure we have as many good days as possible. I want to keep days like that to a minimum.”